In South Africa, the provision of pharmaceutical services is guided by the National
Drug Policy (NDP), which was adopted in 1996. The health goal of the NDP is ―to
ensure the availability and accessibility of essential medicines to all citizens. Within a
resource-constrained environment, irrational medicine use has the potential to
compromise available health care resources, hence posing a serious threat to the
functioning of the health system. The development and use of national essential
medicines lists (EMLs) as well as the establishment of pharmaceutical and
therapeutics committees (PTCs) have been identified as key interventions to
promote rational medicine use (RMU).